How I got introduced to PC Gaming

Hello Everyone!

For starters, my name is Michael and I first got into PC Gaming playing the original CounterStrike. My very first computer was an eMachines desktop(yes, the picture above is what it looked like with the big CRT and everything) that was bought by my parents to be used by my brother and I. At first, I just used the computer to go onto www.gamefaqs.com to look up guides and cheat codes for the Playstation 1 games I had been playing. I remember when I was in 7th grade, I went over to my friends house with a couple of my other friends. When we got there, my friends would take turns playing CounterStrike and I had no idea what this game was. Even though I was just watching, I could feel the excitement playing the game and I asked my friends how I could get the game. After I bought the game and installed it on my desktop, I started to spend hours and hours each day playing CounterStrike with my friends online. Luckily, no one else in my family was interested in using the computer so essentially it had become mine to use.


At first, I really didn't care how I was doing in the game as I was just having fun and just enjoying something new. Despite the huge gap in the skill level between me and my friends, they never called me out on it and they would just encourage me to keep playing since everyone starts from somewhere. Although my friends would help motivate me to keep playing, there were always random people I've never met before who would constantly mock me for my mistakes. To make matters worse, these were people with mics and I would hear the words "noob" called out every couple of seconds. To be honest, I felt so discouraged after hearing stuff like this that I actually put down the game for a couple of days. Later on, I was invited by my friends to play again, but this time without any random people. I remember loathing the decision the whole time and asking myself "why did I say yes???" I don't know if it was cause they were going easy on me or something just clicked; I played far better that game than I ever had before. From that point on, I picked up the game again and drowned out the shit-talkers and just kept playing the game. Eventually, I moved from pubs to scrims where a whole new aspect of the game came about. In a matter of days, I had learned new maps, new spots, and new strategies to run. Every single day when I came home from school, I would ask my friends if they wanted to scrim that night. I would quickly finish my homework so that my CounterStrike time wouldn't be cut short or interrupted. This would be the first major step that I took towards making gaming a part of my life.